Google builds on open source project with addition of Kubernetes

Google, with the support of other leading tech firms, announced yesterday its plans to develop open source software, named Kubernetes, which will enable users to manage their workloads across thousands of servers. As Quentin Hardy notes in his recent Bits blog post, Amazon Web Services (AWS) was clearly ‘absent’ from the launch, which also involved powerhouses like Microsoft, IBM and Red Hat alongside Google.

Building on the success of its applications, like Gmail and Maps, Google hopes to market Kubernetes to IT enterprises around the globe as an opportunity to benefit from the search giant’s powerful cloud computing system.

“Some of the biggest enterprises in the world are throwing their hats into the ring,” said Miles Ward, an executive with Google Cloud Platform, Google’s cloud computing business. “We have built a stupefying amount of software using this.”

Kubernetes, Hardy adds, may also prove useful in smaller cloud systems operated by private companies, especially for deploying applications and creating hybrid clouds. “We are big believers, long term, in public clouds,” Ward said, “but there is still a couple of trillion dollars in gear sitting around doing computing inside companies.”